bank foreclosure

You've undoubtedly seen all of them or read them. Glossy ads or four-color advances in magazines and papers promising to show you all of the juicy information regarding successful property investing. And all you have to do to learn all these real est investing surface encounters chuck russo secrets is to pay a rather high sum for a one-or two-day seminar.




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Successful owning a home requires cash flow. That's the nature of any type of business or investment, especially property investing. You put your hard earned money into something which you desire and plan is likely to make you additional money.




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While it may be true in which buying real-estate with absolutely no money down is straightforward, anyone that is even made a simple investment (such as buying their very own home) is aware there's much more involved in real estate investing that can cost you money. For instance, what regarding any required repairs?




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When real-estate investing inside rental attributes, you'll want in order to select simply qualified tenants. If you've no cash flow when property investing in rental properties, you might be pressured to take in a much less qualified tenant since you need somebody to cover you money to enable you to take care of fixes or attorney at law fees.




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Another downfall of numerous new to real estate investing is actually, well, greed. Make the profit, yes, but will not become thus greedy that you ask with regard to ridiculous leasing or resell rates on any of your real property investments.




Those new to real est investing must see property investing like a business, NOT an interest. Don't think that real est investing is going to make you abundant overnight. What business does?




It requires about 6 months to decide if real-estate investing in for you. If you have decided that, hey I enjoy this, then give yourself a few years to actually start earning profits. It often takes at least five years being truly productive in property investing.




Persistence may be the key to be able to success in property investing. If you've decided that real estate investing is perfect for you, surface encounters chuck russo keep plugging away at it and the rewards will be greater than you imagined.











Warren Buffett just announced that he's making a landmark investment, $5 billion, in Bank of America.

Bank of America was facing a free-falling stock price and a number of criticisms, including that it did not have enough capital, and that its assets were not worth what it claimed.

Now thanks to Buffett, that will certainly change.

When similar investments were made in Citi and in Goldman Sachs, by Prince Alwaleed and Warren Buffett, in 1990 and 2008, respectively, the stocks experienced long term gains. 

And get this - he says he dreamt up the idea to invest in Bank of America in the bathtub on Tuesday. He liked it, so he called Moynihan on Wednesday morning. The entire story of how it happened is available in a video embedded below, as told to Becky Quick by Buffett.

The story (and the mental image) is amusing but also important - it suggests that the Obama Administration and/or the Treasury, did not have a hand in the agreement.

And to make it very clear that Treasury or Obama had no hand in the arrangement, which makes the news even better for Bank of America.

So does this - the deal is expensive for Buffett, and a good deal for Bank of America. He says in some ways, it's better than the deal he gave to Goldman Sachs in 2008.

But obviously, it's a great deal for Buffett.

Buffett's investment alone is now worth $700 million more than it was when he bought it.

You wouldn't think Apple and Indonesia have much in common. On the surface, they don't, but they can still teach you a lot about investing. Let's start with Apple.

Apple made the news recently with two major events. It is locked in a battle with Exxon over which is the most valuable company by market capitalization -- a remarkable turnaround. Apple has a market value of over $344 billion. Then Steve Jobs announced his resignation at Chief Operating Officer for health related reasons.

According to a thoughtful blog by Weston Wellington of Dimensional Fund Advisors (not available online), it was not so long ago that the financial media was trashing Apple. In February 14, 2005, Robert Barker, in an article in BusinessWeek stated "...Apple doesn't tempt me..." I wonder what did. Maybe Lehman or Bear Stearns!

Steven Gandel weighed in with an article in Money on March 24, 2004. He quoted Transamerica portfolio manager Chris Bonavico who opined that Apple stock is "...crap from an investor standpoint."

Many analysts credit the remarkable sales of its Apples Stores as the key to Apple's success. In a quote attributed to David Goldstein, Channel Marketing Corp, which appeared in an article in BusinessWeek on May 21, 2001, Mr. Goldstein gave Apple "two years before they're turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake."

What can you learn from these comments about Apple stock? Read the financial media if you find it entertaining. It's useless (and potentially harmful) as a source of reliable financial advice.

What about Indonesia?

The financial media was preoccupied with the downgrade by Standard & Poor's of the credit rating of the U.S, which lowered its rating from AAA status to AA plus. The new rating places the U.S. below the United Kingdom, Canada and even the Isle of Man.

Many investors viewed the lower rating with alarm and considered it a precursor of low stock returns for decades to come. The data tells a much different story, and may indicate there is no better time to invest in U.S. stocks and bonds.

In another blog, Wellington notes that Standard & Poor's rated the credit of Indonesia a "B" in July, 2001, which placed it in the "junk" category. Over the past decade, its credit rating has never risen to investment grade.

Investors in the Jakarta Composite have earned a total return of a whopping 29% per year over the last decade, ending June 30, 2011. According to Wellington, "If the Dow Jones Average had kept pace with Indonesian stocks over the past decade, it would be over 104,000 today."

Here's the lesson to be learned from Indonesia: A low (or reduced) credit rating on sovereign debt does not necessarily correlate to lower stock market returns. This is the opposite of what many investors and financial talking heads believe.

Most investors get their financial information from the financial media or brokers. As Dr. Phil would say: How is that working for you?

Dan Solin is a Senior Vice President of Index Funds Advisors (ifa.com). He is the author of the New York Times best sellers The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read, The Smartest 401(k) Book You'll Ever Read, and The Smartest Retirement Book You'll Ever Read. His new book, The Smartest Portfolio You'll Ever Own, will be released in September, 2011. The views set forth in this blog are the opinions of the author alone and may not represent the views of any firm or entity with whom he is affiliated. The data, information, and content on this blog are for information, education, and non-commercial purposes only. Returns from index funds do not represent the performance of any investment advisory firm. The information on this blog does not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice and is limited to the dissemination of opinions on investing. No reader should construe these opinions as an offer of advisory services. Readers who require investment advice should retain the services of a competent investment professional. The information on this blog is not an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any securities or class of securities mentioned herein. Furthermore, the information on this blog should not be construed as an offer of advisory services. Please note that the author does not recommend specific securities nor is he responsible for comments made by persons posting on this blog.

foreclosure auctions

Realtors are not reporting the true sold prices on homes.  Here are 2 examples.  If a home is listed on the MLS and then sells at a auction like Hudson & Marshal or RealtyBid, you can see the sold price online or if you attend the live auctions, see the house sell at open outcry auction.  The next day the houses are reported sold on the MLS but always at full price.

The example below sold for $115,000 at Realtybid but is listed as sold for $159,500 on the MLS.

Also, homes are listed on the MLS and sold on the HUD site.  You can see the sold area on HUD and the Bid Stats.  The house listed below sold on the Hud site for $90,061 but again was listed as sold for full price on the MLS $113,400.

These are only 2 examples, I have seen over 100 and assume it is occurring everywhere.  I understand that foreclosures are not included in the sales stats from the Realtor Assoc. but the stats they use are taken from the sold prices listed on the MLS.  They are all false.

Simply said, this means that any pricing data coming off Multiple Listing Services is fatally flawed, and if this observation is verified, could potentially be a simplistic means to misrepresent the true home price by up to 40% higher.

As for the examples, here is property 1 as represented by the MLS: note the price of $159,500

And below is the actual final auction price on the exact same property taken from RealtyBid:

The MLS certainly pulled all the correct information on the property... all except for the price.

Another example: 5572 Goodhue Ave, Rockford IL 61109. The house was sold in auction for a purchase price of $90,061 as the below screenshot from the HUD auction indicates:

Yet the very same property was listed on foreclosure.com, and subsequently pulled by Zillow, as having a value of $113,400

These are merely two examples.

We have a simple question: which price is the NAR, Case-Shiler, and every other resi real estate index service pulling: the higher or the lower. For the ongoing credibility of the suddenly green shoot free recoveryless recovery, we at least hope it is the correct one. Which is why we ask readers to advise us of any comparable bifurcations between paid and listed price on properties they may be aware of.

Suddenly David Rosenberg's claim that no properties over $750,000 sold in the past month doesn't seem all that outlandish...

Recently I went to visit an acquaintance who was trashing out his own condo. There were hinges to be pried out of doorways and appliances to take for eBay. The house had become inert, a non-house: trapped somewhere between the building's association who wanted the fees owed to pay for the building's roof and walls and the like, the people who wanted the property taxes to pay for things like schools and street lights and roads and the people who were in charge of collecting (or more likely not collecting) the mortgage for whomever actually owned the mortgage debt (at the end of that chain, quite possibly you and me). These various claimants made the house largely worthless—more worthless than the latest assessment, which was… well, a comparable apartment nearby had recently sold for $120,000. It had been listed at $325,000 in May, 2009. That $120,000 sale price was not much higher than that apartment's last sale—twenty years ago.

Anyway, it was somewhat likely that, after the investment of some work on this apartment that was being trashed out, such as providing it with new door hinges and appliances, the association would find a renter unafraid of a possibly surprising ending to his rental agreement term in exchange for a below-market rent. That would be a best outcome.

The others would most likely find no purchase for their attempts to collect (the owner was protected by bankruptcy), and certainly the bank had little incentive to collect the mortgage, although their claims on the title would likely make finding a purchaser difficult.

One of the few chairs remaining in the near-vacant condo was occupied by someone on the other side, as it were. Someone not in bankruptcy, for one thing. This person had recently made a $200,000 offer on two-bedroom apartment in a nice part of town. (Needless to say, this town was not New York City.)

But when he had gone to get a mortgage, the bank had balked, because that apartment now assessed at half that value, and so now his current offer for the two-bedroom was at something like $78,000, having come up from something like $65,000 or $72,000. That offer number was jiggling and that title too was somewhat not entirely not cloudy, because that condo association was trying to get a bit of the sale money for past unpaid maintenance under the old owner, which seems, if logical, a bit short-sighted of the association's best interests. They ran the risk of receiving zero dollars instead of some dollars, by dragging the potential new owner into someone else's debt.

But then, we're pretty much all subject to someone else's debt these days, even those of us who rent. Renters are shielded from what is happening with a property, except when they receive a stray envelope addressed to their landlords, or the records pop up online—and the record-keeping systems, when I look up mortgages and sales online, seem to me to be bogged down and very tardy. I imagine the one or two municipal employees in each town in America with the responsibility of making these things public crouched in some little cave, with a stack of depressing white and red and yellow paper towering over their little desks. (Really, it's probably all done by computers. With near- or off-shored labor—somewhere in Utah or Israel.)

In any event, there it was: the magical $78,000 two-bedroom apartment. The steal of a lifetime. The great American get-ahead.

I bring this up in part because this Sunday, at the Brooklyn Book Festival, there is a panel at noon which includes Naomi Klein and Kurt Andersen and Jordan Flaherty and also Paul Reyes. His new book, Exiles in Eden—some of which is in the August issue of Harper's—is an account of going to work for his father, who has for some time now been a trasher-outer of abandoned and foreclosed homes. In the book, Reyes follows the trail of breadcrumbs of the people who've abandoned or been evicted from their houses to the foreclosure auctions, and along the way meets people like the housing advocates who've installed squatters in vacant properties.

(The panel is slotted against "Me… In The World," which stars Sam Lipsyte, and a panel called "Pop Life: Music, Memory, and America’s Coming of Age," with Ta-Nehisi Coates, which may be more appealing and relaxing and better-attended, but then we all have to make difficult choices in these times.)

Reyes did the first reading from his book the other week and something odd happened. He did not get author-friendly questions about the precious process of writing his book. Instead, a long discussion ensued among the audience members about the financial system and the housing market. In the audience were brokers and bankers and homeowners and renters. A mass of anecdotage and experience and theory was shared. It was something like an impromptu consciousness-raising session, very thorough, and when the audience left, everyone had had time to sift through his and her experiences with the state of our financial system and to incorporate some fresh input.

"The audience reaction was exactly what I'd hoped for," Reyes wrote to me the other day. "I'm certainly happy to stand up there and blather for twenty minutes, but I'd much rather have an intense discussion about this issue and hear what people have been through and what their ideas are."

Although he'll be taking this conversation to the Times' Opinionator blog's Living Rooms section soon, he does not have at this time many in-person readings scheduled; author reading tours are not booked by publishers much these days.

"I'm trying to work the promotion of the book into a split personality tour of sorts–between the narrative journalist and housing wonk," Reyes wrote. "If all goes well, I'll drop in on university classes in the daytime, then hit the bookstores at night. I'll wear a different pair of glasses for each role, of course."

Next week, on the 14th, Reyes will be reading as well at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore. Perhaps you'd like him to visit your fine local bookstore, classroom or community center. His email address is on his website.

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Small Business <b>News</b>: In The Trenches

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foreclosure listings

make money from home jobs

bank foreclosure

By Mike Konczal, a former financial engineer and fellow with the Roosevelt Institute who writes at New Deal 2.0

A year ago a week from today I discussed the financial innovation that wasn’t. It was a look at Lewis Ranieri, the creator of the mortgage backed security, as well as one of the minds behind the 1984 Secondary Mortgage Market Enhancement Act that created the market for MBS. In the piece he warns in April 2007 and May 2008 that securitization was never meant to handle a nationwide housing bubble and would have major failures if stressed along these lines.

Portfolio lending, like the lending in George Bailey’s bank, can handle writedowns and prevent foreclosures. There’s someone there who is assigned the role of making sure you can make your payments, thus preventing the major destruction that occurs in foreclosures. Ranieri was trying to alert the Milken conference on those two days that there was real danger, and that the market couldn’t fix it. Full quotes are at the post and worth your time, but this May 2008 quote summarizes:

Lou: The cardinal principle in the mortgage crisis is a very old one. You are almost always better off restructuring a loan in a crisis with a borrower than going to a foreclosure. In the past that was never at issue because the loan was always in the hands of someone acting as a fudiciary. The bank, or someone like a bank owned them, and they always exercised their best judgement and their interest. The problem now with the size of securitization and so many loans are not in the hands of a portfolio lender but in a security where structurally nobody is acting as the fiduciary. And part of our dilemma here is “who is going to make the decision on how to restructure around a credible borrower and is anybody paying that person to make that decision?” And what we need here is financial innovation in the first instance because you can’t do this loan by loan, you are going to have to scale this up to a bigger level and we are going to … have to cut the gordian knot of the securitization of these loans because otherwise if we keep letting these things go into foreclosure it’s a feedback loop where it will ultimately crush the consumer economy.

Moderator: How optimistic are you Lou? You used crisis, you used Great Depression a few minutes ago. That’s a little strong…

Lou: It’s not strong. I believe we know what to do because it is not remarkably different than what we’ve done in the past in the context of the housing bubble. If we are allowed to do it. We know how to restructure loans. The process has not changed and technology has made it easier….it will work because of the financial technology and internet technology…I don’t think this is an issue of the government, in fact we’d be better left to do what it is we actually know how to do, we know how to deal with housing crisis…but the difference between a foreclosure and a restructuring is frequently over 30% and because of the feedback loop that foreclosures create you keep taking a 30% loss on a smaller number. It doesn’t get to be fun. So no this isn’t a government issue, it is something the market needs to do…

And the market has failed. There are no major restructuring efforts through the private market. The legal conflicts and perverse incentives of middlemen servicers has devastated the housing market. The “nudge” philosophy of what the government can do – give the middlemen a little bribe to do the right thing – has also failed. A government action was clearly needed, and a government action was not delivered. Ranieri was wrong thinking that financial engineering would get them out of this legal mess, and growth and unemployment are suffering accordingly.

Representative Brad Miller is a blog reader, so I think he would have seen this writing on the wall in 2007. And I do know that Representatives Brad Miller and Linda Sanchez offered their “lien stripping” (the proper term for what has become known as cramdown) amendment in December of 2007, back when everyone first realized what a major problem we had in securitization (TPMCafe and dailykos).

Mortgage Modification

How well would this have worked? It’s worthwhile to explain, once again, all the strengths of this approach. From Adam Levitin’s Resolving The Foreclosure Crisis: Modification of Mortgages in Bankruptcy:

In light of market neutrality, the Article argues that permitting modification of home mortgages in bankruptcy presents the best solution to the foreclosure crisis. Unlike any other proposed response, bankruptcy modification offers immediate relief, solves the market problems created by securitization, addresses both problems of payment-reset shock and negative equity, screens out speculators, spreads burdens between borrowers and lenders, and avoids the costs and moral hazard of a government bailout. As the foreclosure crisis deepens, bankruptcy modification presents the best and least invasive method of stabilizing the housing market….

In a perfectly functioning market without agency and transaction costs, lenders would be engaged in large-scale modification of defaulted or distressed mortgage loans, as the lenders would prefer a smaller loss from modification than a larger loss from foreclosure. Voluntary modification, however, has not been happening on a large scale for a variety of reasons, most notably contractual impediments, agency costs, practical impediments, and other transaction costs.

If all distressed mortgages could be modified in bankruptcy, it would provide a method for bypassing the various contractual, agency, and other transactional inefficiencies. Permitting bankruptcy modification would give homeowners the option to force a workout of the mortgage, subject to the limitations provided by the Bankruptcy Code. Moreover, the possibility of a bankruptcy modification would encourage voluntary modifications, as mortgage lenders would prefer to exercise more control over the shape of the modification. An involuntary public system of mortgage modification would actually help foster voluntary, private solutions to the mortgage crisis.

Mortgage modification would de

al cleanly with the issues of refinancing, servicing conflicts and perverse incentives, second liens and other junior mortgages, getting rid of all the problems of mortgage securitization expert Ranieri identifies above.

Bankruptcy modification also would deals with the specifics of negative equity and unemployment income shocks without benefitting speculators, removing a real and worrisome issue for helping consumers who need it without helping those who don’t.

This is because in Chapter 13, debtors must bear their finances to the public, have money and time transaction costs, and live on a court-supervised, means-tested budget for three or five years. Chapter 13 also insists on full repayment of certain debts. Chapter 13 filers must have less than $1,010,650 in secured debts, so million-dollar mortgage holders or multiple property holders couldn’t rush to take advantage of this. It keeps speculators out.

This is not a magic solution. There will be those who can’t afford their mortgages even at market clearing rates, for which Right To Rent is a perfect solution. But these are fair and efficient and a proper response for this crisis rather than the costs of other options. And it is important to remember that there still are options for the government to pursue rather than a lot of loud talk about blaming evil runaway homeowners. By any conceivable measure, homeowners are under-strategically defaulting, not over. They are doing this because they want to stay in their homes and communities. It would be a wise idea to have clear government solutions to get them to do so.

Yves here. We have also advocated modification of residential mortgages in bankruptcy, as is now done for commercial real estate and other types of secured loans, such as for pleasure boats. That idea was beaten back early in the reform debate.

Note also that Konczal mentions the use of Chapter 13 bankruptcies. It isn’t widely recognized that servicers and the mortgage foreclosure mills also fight the use of Chapter 13, by filing a motion opposing the bankruptcy stay. Ironically, some attorneys representing Chapter 13 clients have fought these motions by questioning the standing of the party pursuing the foreclosure (often a servicer or MERS, the mortgage registry service, rather than the trust that presumably owns the note), which is producing results to the industry far more damaging had they allowed these Chapter 13 filings to proceed.

Foreclosure Mediation Programs Succeed Across The Country — Will Pawlenty Give Minnesota’s A Chance?

Today, across the country, mortgage mediation programs aimed at helping struggling homeowners stay in their homes are getting underway. Programs are launching in Maryland, as well as Florida’s 6th and 10th judicial circuits — encompassing Pasco, Pinellas, Hardee, Highlands, and Polk counties — while Cook County, Illinois is beginning a huge round of outreach for its burgeoning program.

In all, “the number of jurisdictions with foreclosure mediation programs is nearly double the number a year ago, with jurisdictions in 21 states now offering foreclosure mediation or negotiation programs.” Not on this list, however, is Minnesota, where Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) saw fit to veto a program last year.

The Minnesota state senate recently passed the bill again, sending it to the state House, so Pawlenty could very well get a second shot soon. And there’s simply no reason for him to oppose the program, as mediation — during which a bank meets face-to-face with a borrower, often in the presence of a judge and housing advocates, to try and forge a mortgage modification or other arrangement that prevents a foreclosure — is one of the most successful methods of helping struggling borrowers stay in their homes.

Connecticut’s mediation program, for instance, has kept 60 percent of its borrowers out of foreclosure. Philadelphia’s success rate is also 60 percent, while Nevada claims an 85 percent success rate:

About 80 percent of homeowners at risk of losing their homes don’t engage in any efforts to negotiate with their lender. And those who do so on their own often run into a bureaucratic mess, including hours on hold, lost records, and customer service representatives who know nothing about the borrower’s situation. Mediation helps to ensure that situations like that don’t happen.

“These new protections empower our fellow Marylanders, putting them on a more equal footing with mortgage companies that too often can’t be bothered to pick up the phone before beginning a foreclosure proceeding against a Maryland family,” said Governor Martin O’Malley (D). And lest Pawlenty think this is a purely partisan issue, it has also won the praise of Gov. Jodi Rell (R-CT). “Clearly, mediation is an effective tool homeowners can use to ward off foreclosure,” she said. “This program is a beacon of hope for hard-pressed homeowners and a real alternative for lenders.”

In mediation, there’s no requirement for a lender to accommodate a borrower, but it’s often the case that preventing a foreclosure is in the best financial interest of both the borrower and the lender. As CAP’s Andrew Jakabovics and Alon Cohen wrote, “the simple act of participating in mediation consistently yields solutions short of foreclosure that are acceptable to both sides.” Hopefully, should the Minnesota legislature do the right thing and create a program, Pawlenty will allow it to stand.

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App review: BBC <b>News</b> on iPad &amp; iPhone | Econsultancy

Despite concerns expressed by commercial rivals, the BBC's first iPhone and iPad apps were released last week, with BBC News the first release.

Shakesville: Today in Not <b>News</b>: The Afghanistan War Blows

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Francine Hardaway: <b>News</b> Died This Week

But both the news and journalist Daniel Schorr died this week. Schorr died peacefully after a long and productive life. The news, however, was murdered. Unworthy commentators destroyed news.

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App review: BBC <b>News</b> on iPad &amp; iPhone | Econsultancy

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Shakesville: Today in Not <b>News</b>: The Afghanistan War Blows

The biggest news about this leak should be that the horror the documents reveal isn't actually news. Not to anyone who's been paying attention to the war we're totally not supposed to be paying attention to. ...

Francine Hardaway: <b>News</b> Died This Week

But both the news and journalist Daniel Schorr died this week. Schorr died peacefully after a long and productive life. The news, however, was murdered. Unworthy commentators destroyed news.

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foreclosure search

A reader writes:

As a budding scientist who has been involved in the HIV field, it is rather frustrating to see media reports of the latest breakthrough in research without a full understanding of the findings and their significance (not that the medical establishment is not complicit … we put out these press releases in order to justify continued research money).  As you are well aware, the field had been fraught with repeated false hopes and, after more than two decades of trying, we are no closer to a preventative vaccine than when we first started.

These findings today do not really change this fact.  The same group has previously described another such neutralizing antibody but have been unsuccessful in their attempts to elicit this response in other individuals (this is the premise of a vaccine).  The very fact that the vast majority of people fail to mount a significant immune response against the virus (unlike we do to most other pathogens) suggests that a vaccine may not even be possible in the first place.  Pharmaceutical therapy, for better or worse, will remain our best response to this disease for the foreseeable future. 

That being said, without any signs of the disease abating, research like this cannot be discounted.  Just don’t expect results any time soon.

I don't. The Dish has long been dismissive of the search for a vaccine against HIV, but this did seem like a positive development. Another writes:

Thanks for that piece of news, Andrew. It actually brought tears to my eyes. I keep forgetting how much we suppress those hopes for a cure, then I read something like that and there's this flame, this glimmer of promise and I'm suddenly in tears. We forget how much that hope for a cure means to us, and how much we've pushed it aside and filed it away.

Right now I'm in this perfect storm of unemployment, heathcare crisis and AIDS.

Since I am, according to some, too lazy or drug-addled to find work, I've had to choose between my COBRA payments and my med copays and Dr. visits. I chose my COBRA payments for fear of that dreaded insurance lapse that would kick in pre-existing exclusions and not getting that all important certificate of coverage for my next (hopefully) job. Since I actually have a home (not sure for how long) and not totally homeless and destitute (yet) I don't qualify for a lot of help. Even if I did now, the state of GA, like many states, now have a Ryan White waiting list to get meds. Even my discount med cards from the drug companies didn't help enough to make them affordable.

So I'm waiting, waiting, waiting - so much has to fall into place, IF I can get a job in the next month or so, and IF they have good benefits, and IF the timing is just right, I might just be able to keep my insurance and go back on my life-saving meds. IF in the next month or so, I don't, I"m hitting several walls, my unemployment running out, my COBRA ending, foreclosure, bankruptcy. That's hoping too that after almost a year off my meds now, that I'm not blindsided by some totally preventable HIV related disease that would put me in the hospital and suddenly make any hope of this turning out well fly right out the window.

I have an older brother who is a wealthy retired executive from Philips, and very much a ditto head. They can't see giving me money since they would just be "enabling" me and keeping me from really looking a job (yes he really said that, almost a verbatim FOX talking talking point). Being a Christian though he did help me rewrite my resume. He keeps saying "just get private insurance" and even "just start my own company" but he hasn't a clue. With my meds running at $10,000 a month and having HIV/AIDS, I'm uninsurable through private health insurance, he doesn't understand that and almost refuses to believe it.

To address a lot of the current bashing of the unemployed: I'm a sharp hard working guy. I had the highest SAT scores in my class, I was pre-med at Wake Forest, two years ago I was making almost $60,000 a year, running an entire print production facility and doing it well. I've worked in consulting firms, F500 marketing departments, I have a killer resume. Yet...

So thanks again for that article. I do still hope. I've been in this crisis from the beginning, HIV+ back before there was even a test or a known cause. I had a partner who was only months ahead of me in progression, yet for every new drug that he just missed being able to take advantage of, I was able to. So our paths that at one time seemed to be almost lockstep veered apart and he died some 20 years ago and I'm still kicking around (I hope). I would just be crushed though that after living the miracle that being a 20+ year long-term survivor entails, that because of seemingly mundane things like a job and health insurance it might all be for nothing.

A reader writes:

As a budding scientist who has been involved in the HIV field, it is rather frustrating to see media reports of the latest breakthrough in research without a full understanding of the findings and their significance (not that the medical establishment is not complicit … we put out these press releases in order to justify continued research money).  As you are well aware, the field had been fraught with repeated false hopes and, after more than two decades of trying, we are no closer to a preventative vaccine than when we first started.

These findings today do not really change this fact.  The same group has previously described another such neutralizing antibody but have been unsuccessful in their attempts to elicit this response in other individuals (this is the premise of a vaccine).  The very fact that the vast majority of people fail to mount a significant immune response against the virus (unlike we do to most other pathogens) suggests that a vaccine may not even be possible in the first place.  Pharmaceutical therapy, for better or worse, will remain our best response to this disease for the foreseeable future. 

That being said, without any signs of the disease abating, research like this cannot be discounted.  Just don’t expect results any time soon.

I don't. The Dish has long been dismissive of the search for a vaccine against HIV, but this did seem like a positive development. Another writes:

Thanks for that piece of news, Andrew. It actually brought tears to my eyes. I keep forgetting how much we suppress those hopes for a cure, then I read something like that and there's this flame, this glimmer of promise and I'm suddenly in tears. We forget how much that hope for a cure means to us, and how much we've pushed it aside and filed it away.

Right now I'm in this perfect storm of unemployment, heathcare crisis and AIDS.

Since I am, according to some, too lazy or drug-addled to find work, I've had to choose between my COBRA payments and my med copays and Dr. visits. I chose my COBRA payments for fear of that dreaded insurance lapse that would kick in pre-existing exclusions and not getting that all important certificate of coverage for my next (hopefully) job. Since I actually have a home (not sure for how long) and not totally homeless and destitute (yet) I don't qualify for a lot of help. Even if I did now, the state of GA, like many states, now have a Ryan White waiting list to get meds. Even my discount med cards from the drug companies didn't help enough to make them affordable.

So I'm waiting, waiting, waiting - so much has to fall into place, IF I can get a job in the next month or so, and IF they have good benefits, and IF the timing is just right, I might just be able to keep my insurance and go back on my life-saving meds. IF in the next month or so, I don't, I"m hitting several walls, my unemployment running out, my COBRA ending, foreclosure, bankruptcy. That's hoping too that after almost a year off my meds now, that I'm not blindsided by some totally preventable HIV related disease that would put me in the hospital and suddenly make any hope of this turning out well fly right out the window.

I have an older brother who is a wealthy retired executive from Philips, and very much a ditto head. They can't see giving me money since they would just be "enabling" me and keeping me from really looking a job (yes he really said that, almost a verbatim FOX talking talking point). Being a Christian though he did help me rewrite my resume. He keeps saying "just get private insurance" and even "just start my own company" but he hasn't a clue. With my meds running at $10,000 a month and having HIV/AIDS, I'm uninsurable through private health insurance, he doesn't understand that and almost refuses to believe it.

To address a lot of the current bashing of the unemployed: I'm a sharp hard working guy. I had the highest SAT scores in my class, I was pre-med at Wake Forest, two years ago I was making almost $60,000 a year, running an entire print production facility and doing it well. I've worked in consulting firms, F500 marketing departments, I have a killer resume. Yet...

So thanks again for that article. I do still hope. I've been in this crisis from the beginning, HIV+ back before there was even a test or a known cause. I had a partner who was only months ahead of me in progression, yet for every new drug that he just missed being able to take advantage of, I was able to. So our paths that at one time seemed to be almost lockstep veered apart and he died some 20 years ago and I'm still kicking around (I hope). I would just be crushed though that after living the miracle that being a 20+ year long-term survivor entails, that because of seemingly mundane things like a job and health insurance it might all be for nothing.

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foreclosure law

Jerry Kane, the man who with his son shot and killed two police officers after being pulled over in Arkansas last week, was a largely unsuccessful traveling pitchman for an esoteric anti-government theory known as "Redemption," telling desperate homeowners facing foreclosure that they did not have to pay off their mortgages because bank loans are fundamentally illegitimate, according to JJ MacNab, a Maryland insurance analyst who tracks anti-tax and anti-debt schemes.

"He was one of the followers of the Redemption method, the idea being because the bank loaned you money from someone else's checking account, it's committing fraud. Therefore, you don't have to pay your loan," says MacNab, who first encountered Kane about four years ago when, she says, he began posting on a now-defunct Web forum called SuiJuris.net.

Kane and his young son were killed by police in a second confrontation shortly after the traffic stop.

Redemption theory is described by the Anti-Defamation League as based on the premise that "a bankrupt United States converted the physical bodies of its citizens into assets against which it could sell bonds, and that knowledgeable people can 'redeem' these assets and, through manipulating them and various imagined accounts, use them to their advantage. Much of the rhetoric is, as is common with 'sovereign citizen'/'common law' theories, nearly incomprehensible and often laced with Biblical references used as points of law."

MacNab says the SuiJuris.net was inhabited by followers of the sovereign citizen movement, which holds that most government institutions are illegitimate.

About two years ago, at the height of the mortgage crisis, Kane shifted from being a poster to a promoter of his own debt elimination seminars, MacNab says. According to his website (the password, as publicly revealed by Kane, is "makeme"), Kane criss-crossed the country, giving recent seminars in Arizona, California, and Las Vegas. When he was killed in Arkansas Thursday, he was en route to Florida, and was then scheduled to go back to the West Coast this summer.

Kane's site features links to standard foreclosure documents along with obscure texts like "The Law of Negotiable Instruments," written in 1904 by one Major D.H. Boughton, a Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, cavalry instructor.

MacNab says that some of Kane's competitors -- debt elimination pitchmen like Tim Turner of americacanbefree.com and Sam Davis of statusisfreedom.com -- can pack a room with ticket-paying guests in a cheap hotel or event hall. But Kane, in his regular appearance (.mp3) on an amateur Web radio show earlier this month, complained he wasn't having much success.

"I had a class in Denver back in January, and I went to Denver and not one person showed up for it," Kane said.

In the Web radio appearance, held on a community call service called TalkShoe, Kane comes of as sluggish and incoherent, lacking even the superficial charisma and fluency with language associated with successful motivational speakers. Still, enthusiastic listeners keep calling in to hear Kane hold forth about how to use "deeds of trust" and "power of attorney" to advantage during foreclosure proceedings.

Traveling the country with Kane was his 16-year-old son Joe, who was also killed by police Thursday. At one seminar at which Joe Kane appeared with his father, Jerry Kane reportedly bragged to the audience: "Can anybody tell that my son has never been to school? ... He slipped though the cracks."

Jerry and Joe Kane's home in Springfield, Ohio, was itself foreclosed on in 2006, according to WREG in Memphis.

A resentment for the government appears to undergird much of Kane's thinking. Speaking on the May radio show of his arrest and brief imprisonment in New Mexico (mugshot above) for driving without a license, Kane said he was "putting together an invoice for him for approximately $80,000 in gold for eight uses of my name" by the police.

Of the arresting officer, he said: "I've already done a background check on him, I found out where he lives, his address, his wife's name." And continued: "They're psychotic. Go look up the five categories of psychopaths. They get a sexual thrill out of it. They're sick in the head, that's all. So we just have to play their silly ass little games, go in there and kill the monster under the bed so to speak."

Here's a sample clip from one of Kane's seminars:

An Ohio-based loan modification service disciplined in its home state a year ago now faces similar allegations from neighboring Indiana that it promised more than it delivered to save troubled homeowners from foreclosure.



The lawsuit filed against Foreclosure Assistance USA by the Indiana Attorney General alleges 600 Indiana residents signed contracts with the company. FA USA sent direct mail offers with specific foreclosure case information, claiming it could offer immediate assistance, the attorney general's office said.



In addition to deceptive practices, the suit claims the company further violated Indiana law by not providing a $25,000 surety bond -- a sum of money given to a third party to back up a transaction if it falls through -- to protect consumers for money-up-front services. A new law will go into effect July 1 requiring all foreclosure assistance operators to have a $25,000 surety bond on file with the state.



An attempt to reach FA USA at the number listed on their Better Business Bureau reliability report found the line disconnected.



In a similar case, the Federal Trade Commission placed a restraining order on New Jersey-based New Hope Property for collecting money on services not provided. The case found them owing $11.45 million in civil settlements to the state.



The FTC is cracking down on companies trying to take advantage of distressed homeowners by adding new defendants to its case against mortgage relief scammers.














Mike Fuljenz Mike Fuljenz

foreclosure homes

"That's a very good thing," said Thomas Lawler, an independent housing economist in Virginia. But he noted that even with that positive trend, "you are highly likely to see an acceleration in the number of actual completed foreclosures."

Lenders are offering to help some homeowners modify their loans. But many borrowers can't qualify or they are falling back into default. The Obama administration's $75 billion foreclosure prevention effort has made only a small dent in the problem.

About 25 percent of the 1.2 million homeowners who started the program over the past year had received permanent loan modifications as of April. About 23 percent of those enrolled dropped out during a trial phase that lasts at least three months. Many more are in limbo.

Among states, Nevada posted the highest foreclosure rate in May. One in every 79 households there received a foreclosure notice. However, foreclosures there are down 16 percent from a year earlier.

Arizona, Florida, California and Michigan were next among states with the highest foreclosure rates. Rounding out the top 10 were Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Utah and Maryland.

Las Vegas continued to be the city with the nation's highest foreclosure rate, but activity there was down 18 percent from a year earlier. And nine out of the top 10 cities with the highest foreclosure rates posted annual declines. The exception was the Vallejo-Fairfield area in California, where foreclosures were up 1 percent from a year ago.

Foreclosed homes are typically sold at steep discounts, lowering the value of surrounding properties. That's a concern for local communities, and a drag on the economic recovery.

In recent months, home prices have started to sink again after stabilizing last summer. Economists at Goldman Sachs predicted in a report last week that prices will fall about 3 percent nationally over the next year, with the largest declines in cities where mortgage defaults are rising.

"The housing market remains plagued by enormous excess supply," wrote Goldman economist Sven Jari Stehn.

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My business cratered in 2008, followed by a huge loss on a particular project and a tax issue. This all followed on a couple bad years and a couple refinancings on my place. Come the end of 08, I stopped making payments on the mortgage and started sliding sideways into foreclosure and default on the overextended credit card, all the while having next-to-no work coming in.

I economized and gutted it out, managing to keep the lights, heat, and phone on, gas in the car and cadging food and such as I could. I became expert in sussing out when the supermarket would be putting almost-expired chicken on sale for 59 cents a pound. Living in a city, I was able to walk a lot of places and economize further.

After about 6 months of this, I grew tired of the constant phone calls both from bill collectors and from people trying to sell me one flavor of debt salvation or another. I’m a lawyer and I know that most of those schemes were not worth the money, assuming I had the money in the first place. I decided to sell out because even after a couple refinancings, I still had some equity in the place.

All the while, the creditors were trying everything.

The mortgage company and the credit card company tried every line: angry, pleading, appeal to morality, making one feel guilty or ashamed for not paying, you name it.

If it was Bob With The Indian Accent and obvious intercontinental connection, I told him I didn’t understand him and that I had to hang up. Other cases, I’d tell the guy I’d pay when I could. To the inevitable followup question “When do you think that will be?” I’d answer “I don’t know but you’ll find out shortly after I do.”

They would try, try, try to get me to make a promise to pay. Falling into that trap is a bad idea for the debtor for two reasons. First, it can (and a creditor will construe it as) a “novation” of the debt, that is to say, an entirely new contract affirming (and admitting) the validity of the debt. It’s a variation on the scheme Sears used to play with people who got their Sears card debts discharged in bankruptcy and who Sears later approached to try to collect on it anyway. Second, it opens the debtor up to the emotional appeal of not wanting to break your promises and will be used against the debtor that way.

To all that, I would answer “how can you expect me to make you a good-faith promise to pay you this debt when the circumstances that put me in the position of getting phone calls from you have not changed? How can you come to me and tell me that it’s OK to make a promise to pay, when I don’t have the means to do that?” and similar logical flips. I would stick to my positions and let the bill collector do all the arguing.

When they wanted to be my friend, I’d remind them “you’re a bill collector. You are not my friend. You are not trying to help me. You are trying to take money from me – food out of my mouth – so as to move the odometer on this debt. That’s all it is – an odometer. Just numbers that have no relation to reality or anything. you want me to move the numbers in your favor, when I can either eat and make sure the dog is fed or move the numbers in your favor. If our positions were reversed, what would you do?” Not a few times, the collector admitted he’d be doing pretty much the same as I was.

I felt no guilt about taking up their time. If they were working on an hourly wage (highly unlikely), then I was making sure this guy got some hours in and got paid while getting nothing to the employer paying him for it. Screw the employer. If they were working on a percentage of recovery (much more likely) and weren’t bright enough to recognize they were wasting their time with me, well, screw them. Their problem, not mine.

In all things, I was unfailingly polite. I recognized and kept in mind that these were peons trying to do a nasty job, quite probably the only job available to them. “Do unto others…” is something one has to work on all the time. I also knew that they were recording whatever went on, so making a promise or blowing up or making a threat or whatever would be there and pointed at, time and again, for whatever purpose.

The one time, one of the collectors blew up and flew into a tirade about how he hated lawyers and how he hated how we thought we were above the law and a whole panoply of personal insults. I flew back at him and told him to go fuck himself. I then took the time to calm down and straighten my head out first. Then, I called the credit card issuer – they had sent the debt out to a collection agency – and spoke to someone. Since they had shipped this out to an agency, they tried to demur and send me back to the agency. But I reminded them the debt was with them and, more importantly, their agent was violating the law. That’s the Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

When you start waving the FDCPA around, creditors sit up and listen. I worked my way up the chain of supervisors until I reached, I believe, a senior vice-president at the creditor. I explained to him the situation:

I knew there was a problem with the credit card,

I had issues with the way his company had handled it (independent of the collection agency) which left me ill-disposed to view his company as my friend (despite a long, good relationship),

I had serious issues with the illegality of the collector’s conduct,

I admitted and apologized for my blowing up and profanity,

I’m a lawyer and I know all about the FDCPA,

I don’t want to go down the lawsuit road though I easily could and would win.

Having thus set the table, I then told him what I wanted was that I wanted that bill collector fired. Because if he’d done that to me there was little doubt he’d done it to others and he was a litigational ticking time bomb waiting to tear into both his company and the collectors. I then repeated that I could not now pay, but would in the future.

In other words, I dealt with a sensible, sophisticated, professional person in a sensible, sophisticated, professional way.

I didn’t get Mr. Abusive fired, but I got no collection calls for a couple months and none from him for a good six months.

This went on all summer while I was listing and showing the property and going to contract. When the mortgage company filed the foreclosure suit, I waited as long as I could, then filed an answer asserting they had no standing to sue – the documents had been run through the MERS and there was all sorts of assignment language. This bought me months through the legal procedure while I managed to bring the contract to the point of a buyer with a mortgage committment coming. Another six weeks and we closed the sale. The mortgage was paid off, the other debts that had liened the property were paid off and title closed.

I had the good fortune of having lived in a desirable neighborhood that had not suffered a big decline in value and equity in the property and a buyer who wanted the property because it really made an improvement in the work commute; I managed to walk away with some money.

As to the credit card debt, which was not secured by the property, I held out on them. Ultimately, they offered to take 40 cents on the dollar and I paid them the same afternoon.

In the course of economizing, I lost something on the order of 15 or 20 pounds, the result of stress, cutting out beer and ice cream (and just about anything else other than the cheapest staples I could find or cadge) and making sure my money was allocated so the dog got fed first. I went on a vacation – paid for by a friend employed in a good job and repaid by me after closing on the sale. I avoided bankruptcy. I was too broke to go bankrupt (and I didn’t want to prepare, let alone file, the schedules, nor to go through the required debt counseling – a sick joke that favors only the creditors).

The NYT article linked is aimed at propagandizing a specific audience – the judges, lawyers and financilists on the institutions’ side of the foreclosure debate. They’ll read this and every contesting defendant will suddenly be running around in the gas-guzzling airboats, just like every welfare recipient was driving down to the welfare office in their new Cadillac after Reagan said so.

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